i Think they should Maintian their own Distro but use Debian as a Base. Kind of the way Ubuntu dose. that way Mint can make their own upstream changes without being dependant on those made by another Distro. i am a fan of the current LMDE release. They should perhaps make LMDE their Main Distro and Drop Ubuntu. but also Give us LMDE with more options. right now all we have is Gnome and xfce out of the box. give us KDE and LMDE too. i like the Gnome version but lets face it. with the changes the Gnome developers are making to Gnome3 how long can Mint keep their Gnome Distro the way it is? change will come sooner or later and for that reason we need more options. But i say lets put a little more polish on LMDE and make that the main Distro for Mint. who's with me?

I'm thinking in a perfect world:I would have a very solid, stable LMDE Xfce rolling release boot,Followed by a very solid LTS Mint 13 with Mate boot,Followed by a solid Mint LXDE LTS boot. I think my netbook would be perfectly happy running this triple boot for the rest of its netbook life KBD47

tdockery97 wrote:Here's proof of concept that an 11.10 base with Gnome 3 can have top panel moved to the bottom, and icons on the desktop if that's your thing:

One question, though...was that done by use of an extension in gnome 3 or using the "fallback mode"....if it was done using an extension, then please alert Clem to it...so that either he might set it up as default for the MGSE Mint 12 or else at least include it as an extension option in that edition...It sounded from one of his posts on the Mint 12 Preview announcement, that he wasn't aware of any way to move the top panel down to the bottom...

Although i am willing to compromise if needed, to have my mint 12 MGSE with the panel on the top and none on the bottom (moving the new slab menu and window switching up to the top) i'd much prefer to use an extension that will instead let me have the one panel on bottom along with the slab and window switcher...and am sure many would love to set it up exactly the same way!

It would be closest to the old "classic mint desktop" and yet with gnome 3.2 and all the "goodness" it brings with it

So far...no one seemed to know any way to move that panel down from the top with an extension...And i see you even have desktop shortcuts too...how the heck did you that?

a lot of "goodness"...i've been running ubuntu 11.10 for awhile...boots super fast and has unbelievable quick and fast performance...it's a MAJOR improvement over gnome2...gnome 2 feels ancient now to me...

craig10x wrote:a lot of "goodness"...i've been running ubuntu 11.10 for awhile...boots super fast and has unbelievable quick and fast performance...it's a MAJOR improvement over gnome2...gnome 2 feels ancient now to me...

I have to agree on this. Gnome 3 tweaked to be similar to Gnome 2 is definitely better than Gnome 2.

tdockery97 wrote:Here's proof of concept that an 11.10 base with Gnome 3 can have top panel moved to the bottom, and icons on the desktop if that's your thing:

One question, though...was that done by use of an extension in gnome 3 or using the "fallback mode"....if it was done using an extension, then please alert Clem to it...so that either he might set it up as default for the MGSE Mint 12 or else at least include it as an extension option in that edition...It sounded from one of his posts on the Mint 12 Preview announcement, that he wasn't aware of any way to move the top panel down to the bottom...

Although i am willing to compromise if needed, to have my mint 12 MGSE with the panel on the top and none on the bottom (moving the new slab menu and window switching up to the top) i'd much prefer to use an extension that will instead let me have the one panel on bottom along with the slab and window switcher...and am sure many would love to set it up exactly the same way!

It would be closest to the old "classic mint desktop" and yet with gnome 3.2 and all the "goodness" it brings with it

So far...no one seemed to know any way to move that panel down from the top with an extension...And i see you even have desktop shortcuts too...how the heck did you that?

Yes, count me in for one panel. I mostly use a netbook and want to keep as much screen real estate as possible. Bottom panel only would be best, but I could live with a single top panel.KBD47

craig10x wrote:a lot of "goodness"...i've been running ubuntu 11.10 for awhile...boots super fast and has unbelievable quick and fast performance...it's a MAJOR improvement over gnome2...gnome 2 feels ancient now to me...

I'm hoping the new Mint will be fast. I've wondered if adding everything to create MGSE would slow it down a bit, that perhaps it would be faster using MATE. That is one of the things I will be looking at when the RC is released.KBD47

I'm surprised that there are over twice as many votes for Mint as its own distro as there were for following Ubuntu. I can't imagine how Mint can be an independent distro given how much hard work it has taken the team to roll out Debian Edition. Very few people have the ability to create an alternative to Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, etc. An independent distro would need its own repository, and that would mean throwing away the Debian repository.

I like the direction Mint is going in. My vote in the poll is for following Debian. My guess is that LMDE will become the main edition when the Mint team is satisfied that it's ready to fully take over. Following Debian is more work and requires much more skillt than following Ubuntu, but it allows for much more control and a MUCH lighter distro. I've found that LMDE with GNOME runs faster on only 512 MB of RAM than Ubuntu-based Mint runs on 2 GB of RAM. Ubuntu has caught up to Windows in one area - the bloatware department.

swiftlinuxcreator wrote:I like the direction Mint is going in. My vote in the poll is for following Debian. My guess is that LMDE will become the main edition when the Mint team is satisfied that it's ready to fully take over.

+1

swiftlinuxcreator wrote:Following Debian is more work and requires much more skillt than following Ubuntu, but it allows for much more control and a MUCH lighter distro.

I don't think that's true anymore. If you start with Ubuntu now but don't want Unity, global menus, etc., you have to strip out a whole heap of junk before you even get started. And Ubuntu is in a period of intense transition, so you're forced to react to major changes every six months. Ubuntu has never been very good at resolving longstanding issues, either. They seem to only look forward to new things, and neglect to fix and maintain what they already have.

The other thing that really helps in terms of transitioning to a Debian base is GNOME Shell. Extensions for it are written in Javascript and distro-agnostic, so once they're created for the Ubuntu-based release they can just be copied over to LMDE. As long as GNOME keeps things relatively stable post-3.2, LMDE will be easier and easier to roll out.

swiftlinuxcreator wrote:I've found that LMDE with GNOME runs faster on only 512 MB of RAM than Ubuntu-based Mint runs on 2 GB of RAM. Ubuntu has caught up to Windows in one area - the bloatware department.

I use LMDE as my primary OS currently, with Mint 12 as a secondary OS in case LMDE breaks or for any other reason I might need a second OS installed. While I'd be perfectly content with Mint dropping the Ubuntu-based version altogether and just focusing on making LMDE the best damn distro it could ever be, I can see a couple good reasons to keep it around.

One is that Ubuntu-based distros have a huge selection of PPAs available from where to install more up-to-date software and software that is otherwise unavailable, and while in some cases these PPAs can be used without issue on a Debian-based system, it's not usually recommended. That said, the Debian repos usually have much of that software already included in them, and by using the unstable and experimental repos, once can usually get the latest version of most software... Most users probably wouldn't want to have to add the unstable and experimental repos just to update their software to the latest version, though, as they may not be experienced enough to handle any instability doing so may cause, or be able to pick and choose only those packages necessary to update their intended program...

Another reason is that the Ubuntu-based version is somewhat more user-friendly than the Debian-based version, some things just work more smoothly. I can recall that installing Adobe AIR and TweetDeck on LMDE was quite bumpy, it took me forever to figure out that certain 32-bit libraries were not included as part of the ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk packages that were required for TweetDeck to run properly.I ended up having to manually install th gnome keyring library (for TweetDeck to securely save my password, it wouldn't log me in at all without it) and the 32-bit ALSA plugins (so TweetDeck and AIR (as well as any other 32-bit apps) could use PulseAudio to output sound instead of trying to use ALSA directly). Installing AIR and TweetDeck on Ubuntu was much easier, as all of the required packages were installed by the one ia32-libs package in the Ubuntu repos. (I'll admit, I'm probably the only one here who had this exact problem, but it's a good example of what may be the case for other users and other software packages...)

Anyway, that's my opinion, what the devs do in the end is obviously up to them.

I had to stop using LMDE due to something changing along the way that kept my laptop fan from running. It may have been fixed by an update by now, but I've become comfortable again with Mint 9 LTS, so I am going to hold out for the new Mint 12 and LMDE KDE releases before I move ahead again. I'm counting the minutes until Friday hoping the RC will be out. It may, as Mint 12 is now on the testing page of the Community Website.

I've actually been running in ubuntu 11.10 myself (rather then mint 11) and have been pretty happy with it...even using unity (i know hard to believe but true) However, i hope Mint 12 with gnome 3 and minty extensions will LURE ME BACK to the FOLD

tdockery97 wrote:I had to stop using LMDE due to something changing along the way that kept my laptop fan from running. It may have been fixed by an update by now, but I've become comfortable again with Mint 9 LTS, so I am going to hold out for the new Mint 12 and LMDE KDE releases before I move ahead again. I'm counting the minutes until Friday hoping the RC will be out. It may, as Mint 12 is now on the testing page of the Community Website.

That was probably the kernel bug, not distro specific. It should be fixed with kernel 3.0 and beyond.

Mint debian has seen improvement, but for a while I felt like it was just mint menu and updates slapped on a debian base.....I was like 'where is Jockey, codecs, LMMS, Remastersys, and a number of other really important and useful tools'......The debian edition lacks the drivers I need for my wifi card, so I had to go back to an Ubuntu or PCLinux or Sabayon distro. There were also bugs with ATI drivers, and you should not have to log out of x to install an Nvidia card. That requires that we remember CLI commands, which is not noob friendly.

But if Mint got serious about making their own Ubunty alternative directly based on Debian, I would support it. Ubuntu is too bloated, and now buggy. Debian is rock solid, and not suitable as a workstation for noobs.....there needs to be a middle ground that holds your hand just enough, with codecs and drivers, but without AS MUCH bloat as Ubuntu.

And I dont care about bloat as in file size.....put it on blueray for all I care, and fill it to the brim! As long as its snappy, I dont mind a more full featured app set, as long as there isnt too much redundancy like in Ultimate Edition. You dont need more than 1 tool for the same job. Sometimes its forgivable if there is some overlap, like between media players, but in general 1 app per function and cover a lot of functions.

I care more about speed. If its responsive I dont care if /root takes up 50gb.

Regarding Debian--it just is not newbie friendly enough right now. I'm not a newbie but I couldn't get it installed in Virtualbox after three ties nor onto a usb stick. I think what they should do is take a long look at SimplyMepis built on Debian Stable. It is more user friendly and was my first experience with Linux. It was a great rock solid distro to learn from, and perhaps some tweaks used by Warren on Mepis could guide the Mint team. Just a thought.KBD47